Compared with conventional needle and syringe intramuscular and subcutaneous injection, transdermal delivery by microneedle arrays possesses many advantages such as minimal pain and infection, high drug efficacy, and potential of self-administration.
Polymers are often used for fabricating dissolving microneedle arrays for transdermal delivery. In this approach, drugs are usually incorporated in the interior of dissolvable polymer microneedles. Once the microneedles pierce skin, the polymers will dissolve and rapidly release drugs within desired skin layers. Compared with commonly used silicon and metal microneedles, polymer microneedle arrays are cheap to manufacture, safe to use and having no remaining sharp waste post application. However, polymer microneedles may have weak mechanical properties and strong water absorption properties in humidified environment which hampers the mechanical strength of such microneedles.
The composite of the present invention is arranged to ameliorate the above problems or, more generally, to provide an improved composite for preparing a transdermal delivery device.